Irene Buchan

My current work focuses on the institutional aesthetics of a commonly used object and how that image of a male identified object can be reappropriated. It highlights the sociological and repressed evaluation of what the urinal represents in contemporary culture and identifies with the use of man-made objects, in association with mass produced items, that relate to the body and stereotypical gender roles.

Pink Urinals stems from my early experience as the only female surveyor on a construction site and the continuous sexist behaviour of male colleagues.

An inverse cast of the original urinal cast was made to create slip clay ceramics and transform other materials in order to enact male, female, phallic, pregnant belly, androgynous, fluid and non-binary bodily forms.

Other works are based on memories of childhood, fragility and balance. I alternate between the two areas and use humour or oddness in some of my work all the while exploring the body through material form and play.